New poll shows Conservatives sliding in key regions

A new poll by EKOS from the beginning of July shows the Conservatives are slipping in some key regions of the country since the last election.

The Conservatives are, however, still way ahead in Alberta. They would take almost 60 per cent of the vote were an election held right now, leaving the NDP 19.5 per cent and the Liberals a paltry 10. Fortress Alberta is, therefore, holding strong. But the same can’t necessarily be said for the other regions of our fair dominion.

In British Columbia, the Conservatives are apparently faltering, sitting at only 26.3 per cent – down from a high of 45.4 per cent on May 2, 2011. The NDP, on the other hand, have bumped up their support a bit, to 39.4 per cent this month from 32.4 per cent in 2011.

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It’s a similar story for the Conservatives in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where EKOS puts them at just 29.8 per cent support, as opposed to the 54.8 per cent they managed in the 2011 election. And it’s the Liberals who seem to be picking up the slack, having now jumped to 24 per cent support, up from just 12.7 that they gathered on May 2 last year. The NDP have only managed to push their support up a couple of percentage points in these provinces.

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Ontario is less volatile, but still showing signs of movement. The Conservatives are down there, too, according to EKOS, landing at 35.3 per cent (down from just over 44 per cent in the last election). The NDP sits at 29.3 per cent support, up from 25.6 last year. The Liberals are down slightly (about 2 percentage points sine May 2011), sitting at 23 per cent.

The last of these, Ontario, was easily one of the most important for the Conservatives last election, so any kind of significant, sustained drop in the polls there will probably bring a few furrowed brows and sweat stains at party HQ – but that really is only if it keeps up. The Conservatives are still probably confident in Ontario these days, and when push comes to shove it’s entirely possible they could regain some of that ground nearer an election, should they continue to stay where they are.

British Columbia, on the other hand, could be more of a worry. This seems to be the next serious target for the Conservative outreach vote machine – specifically in the Lower Mainland.

Of course, there will soon be a new look to the B.C. riding distribution, as six new seats will be added to give the province (among others) fairer representation in the House of Commons. Already that’s come under some Opposition scrutiny, however. NDP MP Peter Julian told a local paper, the Burnaby NewsLeader, last week that he found the proposed redistribution of the boundaries near his riding “strange.”

So, will the redistribution favour the Conservatives? Julian, for one, doesn’t actually seem concerned. He told the NewsLeader that he didn’t see it as being an issue because the NDP are gaining support in areas they didn’t have it in before. If that’s the case, all the more reason perhaps for the Conservatives to worry. In any case, we’ll have to wait and see.

But what of the Third Party – the one about to be embroiled in a leadership contest?

Where the Liberal brand seems to have had a bit of a resurgence is in Atlantic Canada, where their support has jumped to 32.5 per cent this month, up from 29.3 last spring, but also up considerably since EKOS did a poll in late June (when they only managed 17.8 per cent). That’s a serious jump, and it’s not entirely clear where that would have come from, although the government’s changes to employment insurance could have been a contributing factor, given the number of seasonal jobs in the region. In any case, the rival Conservatives are down to 25.8 per cent support in the region (from 37.9 per cent last May), as are the Dippers, having apparently fallen to 28.4 per cent.

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Rounding out the federation, NDP support in Quebec remains strong – the party garnered 39.1 per cent of it in the EKOS poll. In second place there was the Bloc Québécois, which the poll indicates would manage 20.8 per cent if there were another election. The Liberals and Conservatives are left fighting over most of the rest. The Conservatives only gathered 13.2 per cent support, and the Liberals 16.4 per cent in the poll. Somewhat notable, perhaps, is that the Liberals are now – according to this poll – almost exactly where the Conservatives were a year ago, and vice versa.